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Three is not a large number. In fact, it's one of the smallest numbers I can think of, the last in the row of primes, the strongest number, as architects are happy to tell you. There are far more people in our city, innumerably more stars in the sky, even seven more fingers on the typical human hand. On the whole, I quite like three as a number, a concept, a shape, in its smallness.
I am discovering, however, that I like three quite a lot less when it is the number of times I have been called to deliver you from the emergency room.
It is hard to rationalize, after the fact, what possessed me to acquiesce to your request. Perhaps I was foolishly under the impression that I would never, or at the very most rarely, be called upon to perform my duties as your emergency contact. Perhaps I felt some sense of responsibility—Most of our friends don't have cars, and those that do are quite busy.
Of course, I am also quite busy. But sometimes I fear if I don't do it, no one will.
You know, the most disappointing thing is that I wasn't especially surprised when I got the call. I heard the ER receptionist's voice, ("Grantaire, et c. et c., hit by a car, et c., et c., listed contact, et c., et c., et c.") and felt nothing but a dim bloom of annoyance. After the spraining of your wrist in the spring (which you explained as "trying to lean against an open window,") and the asthma attack bad enough to force you into the urgent care once more (at least you gave up smoking after that,) I can hardly wring any more surprise, horror, or sympathy from myself. Wretched, isn't it? The acclimation I've endured since you drove a truck through my life.
Perhaps such a metaphor is distasteful at the present moment.
You are huddled in my passenger seat, and you do not look well. The doctor said you are not seriously hurt. They took an X-ray of your knee, shone a light in your eyes, then gave you some pills and called me. My stomach aches when I think of how much it will cost. I know you haven't applied for insurance, that you have yet again been defeated by a few sheets of paper. I want to tell you that the urgent care has a sliding scale, almost everywhere does—There are ways of staying alive while we work for the revolution.
But I don't think you would care. You do not seem to have a vested interest in staying alive.
"How are you feeling?" I ask.
"Like I just got hit by a car," you answer, but—I think—you do not try to smile. I do not hear your wry and angry smile under the words. I cannot see your face, as I am watching the road before me. I doubt I would know what you meant even if you were looking directly in my eyes. Your face is a stranger to me. "I got hit by a car," you repeat. Your words are over-enunciated, a likely reaction to the pills they've sedated you with. You sound very well-spoken. "I feel fucking shitty, man. I got hit by a car. That's how I feel."
"I see." My hands flex against the wheel, feeling the slight indentations of patterning. "I am sorry they were not able to salvage your bike."
"Yeah, me too." Your voice is sharper now. I am slightly consoled, as this means that the effects of the pain killers are not so strong. "That was how I got places. I don't have the—" You rap knuckles against my dashboard. "—fancy shit."
I hardly think that a rusty and threadbare stickshift that can be depended upon to ignite about 86% of the time can be regarded as "fancy," but I grasp and appreciate your point. "I'm happy to play taxi," I say. "And I'm sure the others will be as well, once they're appraised of your situation."
"Don't do that," you grouse. "Pretending you're all—nice and stuff."
I bite back the sentence I am nice, as I fear it might not prove my point very effectively. "I'm happy to help," I say instead.
"No, you're not," you counter. "You're happy to be a pawn of this—thing you love so much. Your revolution." I cannot say for certain, but I suspect you roll your eyes. "You don't care about me," you say. "You don't care about anything. You're so goddamn into this whatever, this Marxist bullshit." We stop at a red light, and you lean across the consol, grabbing at my chest and arm. You are trying to get me to look at you. "Don't you get tired of it?" you ask.
"Tired of what?" I keep my eyes on the road but I do not try to shrug you off. I have not slept well the last few nights, my mind has been too furious. Feeling the rough scrabble of your gnawed nails through my shirt is the most at peace I have felt in weeks.
"Tired!" The light turns green and you release me. The car rattles a little as you rattle back into your seat. "Ow," you say quietly.
"Be gentle," I say.
"Whatever." You are silent for a moment. "Why do you care?"
I swallow. I feel the imprint of your hand against my chest. "I care about…people," I say.
"No," you insist. "You don't. You care about The People. An idea. An ideal." You are very pleased with yourself; I can hear it in your voice. "Everyone bores you," you say. "Every person, on their own—Like, the individuals all irritate you. You just want to be in your perfect world, alone."
I feel a shock run through me. I try not to pay too much attention to it. "I believe in my ideals," I say. "That includes the worthiness of every individual."
You make a noise like a horse clearing its nostrils. "You don't mean anything," you say. "You're such a—a nothing-person." I say nothing. "You're cold," you say. "You're a dead fish." With that, you slump against the passenger door. "They put me on a lot of painkillers, dude," you say with less vigor.
"I couldn't tell." I hear the iciness in my own voice, but I am hardly being sarcastic. Your bitter hopelessness, so tiresome, is entirely characteristic. Sometimes, I wish that I could cast you off. I wish I could forget you. But I cannot. I cannot, Grantaire.
We are silent as I pull into the parking lot of your apartment complex. I park and stare out of the window into the hazy summer air. "Here we are," I say.
"Thanks, man." You unbuckle yourself, slam the door open. You take two steps on the asphalt and crumple to your knees.
You are staring at your hands when I reach you. Your face is slack and sad. You are not hurt badly, I don't think, but you are pale and sweaty in a way that bodes ill. "We should get you inside," I say quietly.
"Do you know what it's like?" you say. "Do you know what it's like?" You stand, shakily but with great determination, and turn to stare me dead in the eyes. "To realize you'll never matter more than a goddamn idea?"
I want to step back, but you look like you might fall if I do. So I stay close, feeling the slight heat of your body and smelling fear and sweat and a dim hint of your laundry detergent. I find I cannot speak, so I stay hovering near you, stomach cramped in fear.
"I wanted so much more from you," you say. "Good God, Enjolras, I wanted to actually be wanted for fucking once, like something you actually needed or liked—Jesus, man, I just wanted to be happy."
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to shock me out of my reverie. "Grantaire, I—"
"Whatever, man." You lurch up the walkway. "Don't listen to me!" you call over your shoulder. "Don't listen to me. I'm out of my mind on painkillers."
And you are, I can see it in your uneven gait and the way you fumble at the door with your keycard. But you are also telling the truth. I know, because you never lie.
"Feel better!" I call belatedly as you finally get the door open. You wave dismissively, and I cannot summon the warmth of anger. I am a dead fish when it comes to you.
I drive home with a quiet buzzing in my skull. The windows rolled down. Impacting gnats and flies on my savage windshield. I have thought of you. You have found the porousness of my bones and buried yourself in them, whether you know of it or not.
You think I'm a marble statue, unfeeling. But don't think I haven't considered it. I have considered you, with your obstinate lankiness, your red hair that frizzes out with the slightest hint of humidity so that it catches the light. The slight freckles that appear on the tops of your ears and on your left cheek. I have considered you.
Your callousness, your anger, your irony. You may not be surprised to know that I see them, argue with them, feel them like gnats against my windshield. But so too have I considered your passion, your vitality, the way your mouth moves when you say something clever. I have considered, and I have decided.
Three is a large number when it comes to the number of times you have almost killed yourself in the last year. For convenience, for pleasure, for one last smoke. And true, you've stopped smoking, but you fail to generalize. You don't see through this fog that obfuscates Death and makes Him appear as a friend to you.
And I think: What a shitty way to break my heart. For you, in everything that you are, bitter and sweet. Can I risk it? I think not. When will the call come, not from the hospital but from the morgue? Tomorrow? The next month, or in a year, or five?
I don't know. But I know with near certainty that the call will come. And I will answer, but not as a lover. Not as a friend. No. Dear God, no. I would not survive it.
So I will keep you as I have you. On the other end of a red string, a telephone line, from me to whatever instrument you have designed to hurt yourself next. I will wait until I feel the tug, and then I will come.
In the end, it is you. It is you and the revolution.